From the GoFundMe campaign for Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy
The Queens man who shoved a young woman into a moving E train at the Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street station — leaving her paralyzed from the shoulders down — will spend the next two decades behind bars.
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Kamal Semrade, 42, has been sentenced to 20 years in state prison, capping a case that has stretched on for nearly three years since the unprovoked May 2023 attack on the Upper East Side. A New York State Supreme Court jury convicted him in March of one count each of Attempted Murder in the Second Degree and Assault in the First Degree, both class B felonies.“Kamal Semarde violently pushed a woman into a moving train, uprooting her life and leaving her with catastrophic, permanent injuries, including paralysis,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. said in a statement announcing the sentence. “After the attack, Semrade callously fled, leaving the victim helpless on the platform. While nothing can undo the profound harm caused, I hope this sentence brings a measure of justice as the victim continues her recovery and works to rebuild her life.”
The victim, Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy — a Turkish-born artist then 35 years old — had boarded an E train at the Roosevelt Avenue stop in Queens on the morning of May 21, 2023, on her way to work. Semrade boarded the same train and exited at the same UES station. At roughly 6:05 a.m., prosecutors said, he walked behind her on the platform, moved to her left, and used both hands to shove her by the head and neck into the side of the train as it accelerated out of the station. Her face and head struck the moving car before she was flung back onto the platform, fracturing her spine.
After the attack, Semrade descended to a different platform and eventually left the station. He returned to a shelter in Queens later that day and put the clothes he had been wearing out for laundry. Shelter employees recognized him from an NYPD CrimeStoppers post, and he was arrested two days later. He has remained in custody since.
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Ozsoy underwent spinal surgery and remains paralyzed from the shoulders down. A GoFundMe campaign launched by her family in the days following the attack has raised more than $320,000 toward a $2 million goal for her medical care.Bragg also thanked the two Good Samaritans who stayed with Ozsoy on the platform until officers arrived.
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